by Elise Noble
“Is there a fire? We should evacuate.”
“No, you’re coming with me while I find out what’s going on.”
Bedraggled men and women dashed back and forth as Nevin strong-armed me into the hallway, and one of the apes rounded up the girls and herded us into the lounge. Mercy sat on a wet sofa, hugging herself in a leather basque. I joined her.
“What’s happening?” I asked. “Is there really a fire?”
“I smelled smoke upstairs.”
She began shivering, and I called out to the nearest guard.
“Can we get some blankets?”
“We’re busy here.”
“Well, we’re getting hypothermia.”
Another minute passed before the sprinklers shut off, and by then, everything was soaked. I squashed beside Mercy and wrapped an arm around her. Something flaked off her back, and I peered at it.
“It’s candle wax,” she mumbled. “One of the clients has a fetish for it.”
Then I spotted the red marks on her wrists.
“He tied you up?”
She nodded. “It wasn’t the first time. Greg and that new guy cut me loose. He seems kinder than the rest. The new guy, I mean.”
Yeah, he was, which meant I’d have to remind him to act like more of a dick so he didn’t blow his cover.
“He came from Radcliffe’s. I guess he hasn’t been fully indoctrinated in the ways of Nevin yet.”
Mercy hugged her knees to her chest and shrank further back into the cushions.
“It’s only a matter of time.”
CHAPTER 37 - BLACK
BLACK STARED UP at the words on the screen. Four sentences of neat text, but the implications were huge.
Everything’s changed. Don’t come and get me. I’ve found someone to work with, and we’re on our way to somewhere new to look for Izzy and a banker. Will call when I can. C.
After the raid on the Naples house, they’d retired to their temporary base of operations to plan their next move in the search for Corazon, starting with unravelling her latest message. Which made no fucking sense. Had she been forced to write it?
Rafael stood beside Black, mirroring his stance. “Who the hell is Cora working with?”
“Who’s Cora?” Hallie asked.
Shit. She wasn’t supposed to be in here. They’d put her in the front of the van with Cruz for the trip back, crouched in the footwell until they cleared town, but now she’d wandered into the room behind them.
“Diamond, why don’t you take Hallie and find her some proper clothes?”
“If you want to get rid of me, just say so.”
“I want to get rid of you.”
“Well, aren’t you a sweetheart? You realise I could help, right? I’m totally on your side here.”
“This is a private investigation.”
“Are Cora and Catalina the same person? Because she’s got to be working with Leandro.”
Rafael gave her a tight non-smile. “Yes, but who is Leandro?”
An excellent question, and it was Alaric who came up with the answer moments later when Nate began scrolling through the security camera files they’d retrieved from the house.
“That son of a bitch.”
Nate paused the tape as Corazon appeared in a hallway beside a dark-haired man an inch or so shorter than her. This must be their guy.
“Who? Leandro?”
“Possibly, but I meant Merrick Childs.” Alaric jabbed a finger at the screen. “That man’s an FBI agent, or at least he was.”
“You know him?”
“Not personally, but I saw him around the Florida field office once or twice, and I’ve got a good memory for faces.”
“What’s his name? Presumably not Leandro?”
“I don’t know. He joined right before I left. But leave it with me, and I’ll make a few calls.”
So Cora had hooked up with an FBI agent? Interesting. Nate played more of the footage, and as the pair walked, the gap between them was two inches at most. At one point, Leandro said something and Corazon leaned in closer. Too close. Had she hooked up, or had she hooked up?
Rafael didn’t seem to register the connection, and that was a good thing. The younger man was more emotionally involved than Black, and he needed to keep his anger under control. Difficult given the circumstances.
“The FBI had a man in the house?” Rafael asked. “They knew what was happening in that place and they didn’t stop it?”
“We don’t know the full story yet.”
“I don’t need to. They should never have left the women there.”
Black didn’t disagree. “Let’s concentrate on gathering information. Corazon mentioned looking for a banker, so it’s clear the FBI think he’s still alive. Who is he and, more importantly, where is he? I suspect at this moment, Corazon knows more than us, and whatever she’s found out is bad enough that she’s given up her freedom to carry on looking for the man.”
“And Isabella.”
“And Isabella. But if that was her only goal, she wouldn’t have mentioned the banker in her message, and I suspect she wouldn’t have been quite so willing to head to a new location. Which is where, Nate? Can you track the phone?”
“It’s turned off now. The message was sent from Georgia. Mack carried on tracking the signal through South Carolina, but it disappeared around Myrtle Beach.”
“Looks like we’re heading north. Our first priority is finding Corazon, but I also want to find out everything there is to know about The Banker since he’s wrapped up in all this.”
“Easier said than done,” Alaric said. “My source said Task Force Atlantis has been operating for two years, and if they’ve been looking for The Banker the whole time, he’s not gonna be an easy man to find.”
“Better get started then, hadn’t we?” Black turned to Hallie. “Did anyone at the house ever mention a banker?”
“Not a banker. Lots of the clients were bankers. And investment managers. And attorneys. They all liked to brag about the size of their wallets.”
“So maybe our target is a client, and it’s unlikely he’s in Florida because the FBI agent didn’t find him there.”
“Have you got a photo? Then I can tell you if I saw him or not.”
“We don’t have a photo. What we need are some concrete facts, because this is all speculation. And I’m also curious to hear this story of yours.”
Black took a better look at the girl. Hallie was pretty but too thin, she’d bleached her hair to within an inch of its life, and her jaded hazel eyes said that in her early twenties, she’d already had enough of life. Black had seen that look before in Dan, his second in command in Blackwood’s investigations division. Emmy had brought Dan home as a stray one day, and although they’d both driven him crazy with their antics for a few long months, now he couldn’t imagine life without her. So while his natural inclination was to shove Hallie out the door and keep her well away until this case was over, he hesitated.
And Hallie wrapped her arms around her skinny frame then sank onto a chair.
“The truth is, I have no idea what happened. I went out to a club, then woke up in a stranger’s bed with a dead body lying beside me.”
“Male? Female?”
“An old guy with a bullet hole in his head. And I was holding the gun.”
“Your gun?”
“No! I’d never seen it before in my life. I don’t even know how to shoot.”
“And the man—had you seen him before?”
Hallie shook her head. “Uh-uh, and he was at least fifty. No way would I have been interested if he’d hit on me.”
“So what did you do?”
“I heard sirens, so I got the hell out of there. Except I realised later I didn’t have my purse.”
“You left it in the house? Apartment?”
“House. I wasn’t thinking straight, okay? Someone drugged me, I’m sure of it. But at least I remembered to wipe my prints off the gun.”
“If thi
s is true, then why did somebody frame you?”
“Truthfully, I have no idea. I was working sixty hours a week as a waitress in a shitty diner. I didn’t have time to make enemies.”
“What about the customers?”
“I made sure to be real nice to everyone, even the assholes.” She shrugged. “Better tips that way. All I know is that I planned to go out to a club that night to unwind, and my whole life fell apart.”
It wasn’t the first time Black had heard a story like that. Dan herself had investigated a similar case, and despite the cops’ conviction otherwise, the initial suspect had turned out to be innocent. That made him more inclined to give Hallie the benefit of the doubt, but he needed to hear the rest of her tale first.
Meanwhile, Hallie gulped in air as she tried to control her emotions, and Black made a conscious effort not to frown, a difficult task when he wanted answers, not fucking tears. Thankfully, his wife chose that moment to appear with two mugs of coffee, and the distraction allowed Hallie to pull herself together.
“Are you okay?” Emmy asked.
“I’m not sure how to feel. I thought I’d be stuck in that place forever, and now I’m out of there, but I have to face the future, and I’m not sure which is worse.”
“What happened after you left the murder scene?” Black asked. “You mentioned a warrant?”
“The cops found my driver’s licence and pulled me in for questioning. I had to admit I’d been there, but I said that when I left, the guy was still alive. And they started asking me all these questions about who he was and how I met him, but I didn’t have any clue so I just ended up sounding even more guilty. My first attorney was useless and the cops wouldn’t listen to anything I said, so I tried to find out what happened myself, but I ran out of time and money.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you ended up where you did.”
“At Radcliffe’s? Because I was stupid and desperate. I needed four hundred dollars to get a sample of my hair lab-tested so I could prove I’d been drugged, but I didn’t have four hundred dollars, so I answered an ad for waitstaff. I was so freaking happy when I passed the interview, and the guy seemed totally legit. But then he offered me a ride, and I woke up in Florida.”
“He drugged you?”
“You think I fell asleep by myself? I swear, I’m never accepting a drink from a stranger again.” She glanced down at the mug in her hands. “Why am I even holding this coffee?”
“You have to admit that story sounds farfetched.”
“Couldn’t make it up, right? Yeah, that’s what the cops said too, about the first part.”
“So you say you investigated the case yourself? What happened?”
“I visited the bar I was in and got ahold of video footage of me dancing with a completely different guy, only I never found out who he was. But the man I supposedly killed was a rich real-estate developer, and his wife was real pissed with me.”
“Where’s this tape now?”
“On a flash drive in my new attorney’s office.” Hallie crinkled her nose. “He’s not a great attorney, but he was cheap, and he let me use his phone and his copy machine.”
Sometimes, just sometimes, the most unbelievable stories turned out to be true, and Black’s curiosity had been aroused. When he was a kid, his US mother complained he asked too many questions, but then he’d made a career out of doing precisely that.
Except this week, he had other priorities.
“We’ll look into your case, but right now, our primary goals are to find Corazon and this banker. Everything else takes a back seat. If you want our help, you need to keep out of the way and let us get on with our jobs for a few weeks first.”
“You won’t tell the cops I’m here?”
“No, Hallie, we won’t. Is Hallie your real name?”
“Sort of.” She held out a hand. For all her brashness, she couldn’t hide the way it trembled. “Halina Chastain.”
Black shook her hand, then turned back to business.
“You heard the man,” Emmy said. “Why don’t you get some rest while we work?”
Black glanced over his shoulder, and Hallie backed away. Good move, Halina Chastain. He’d deal with her later.
Alaric actually whistled as he walked through the front door that evening, and Black wanted to punch him for being so cheerful, especially when he checked out Emmy’s ass.
“You’d better have good news.”
“That’s what you’re paying me for.”
Yes, and handsomely at that. Since Alaric went freelance, he’d charged the big bucks for his information, although Black had no idea what he did with the money. He certainly didn’t spend it on haircuts.
“Well?”
“Where’s everyone else? In the dining room?”
Yes, and it was fucking crowded now. Carmen had flown back to Virginia to relieve two other friends, Tia and Eli, of babysitting duties, but that still left Nate, Cruz, Emmy, Ana, Sofia, Rafael, Vicente, and Marisol. At least Dores and Hallie were making themselves useful in the kitchen, and Black had to admit the weird Colombian food the older woman dished up tasted quite good.
“They’re waiting.”
“I need a coffee first.”
For fuck’s sake. “Hallie?”
She appeared almost instantly. “Yes?”
“Do me a favour and make coffee.”
Alaric smiled at her. “One sugar and plenty of cream for me, lovely. Did you do something to your hair?”
“Just washed it.” She beamed back at him. “Coffee’s coming right up.”
“You’re too fucking slick,” Black muttered at Alaric’s back.
“And you’re a cantankerous asshole.”
“Did someone give you a thesaurus for Christmas?”
“Yeah, your wife. Now I know six words for dickhead, ten for thief, and eight for traitor.”
Alaric couldn’t have found out what happened. No way. He was on a fishing expedition, and Black willed his expression to stay neutral.
“Good. The chances are, we’ll need all of them during this investigation.” He gestured towards the double doors of the dining room. “After you.”
Finally, Alaric settled into a seat and began his update, and yeah, Black grudgingly had to admit the man had been busy.
“Leandro’s real name is Leander Arden. Thirty years old, and he’s been with the Bureau for seven and a half years, specialising in financial crimes. He’s a computer whizz who was brought onto Task Force Atlantis to unravel the tapestry of overseas transactions, but they decided he had a face for undercover work and he ended up infiltrating a string of sex clubs operated by The Banker instead.”
“He’s running these places?” Emmy asked. “Not just visiting?”
“Apparently so. He’s always been notoriously secretive, and nobody’s seen him for years. The current theory is that he fled to South America after faking his own death and underwent extensive plastic surgery.”
“So nobody knows what he looks like now?”
“They didn’t have much of an idea in the first place,” Nate said. “I’ve only found one photo, and it’s blurry.”
“How blurry?” Black asked.
Nate put the picture up on the screen, and yeah, it was bad. The snap had been taken on a yacht, and the photographer had been focusing on something else, namely a shapely brunette in a bikini. Black leaned forward for a closer look at the guy, but it didn’t help much.
“Can we clean it up?”
“Mack’s working on that at the moment.”
Then something else in the picture caught Black’s eye. An out-of-focus figure in the background behind the brunette.
“Sofia, is that you?”
She tilted her head to one side, squinting. “I thought the boat looked kind of familiar.”
“And? What were you doing on it?”
“Drinking a Mai Tai, by the looks of it.”
“Fia…”
“Okay, okay… That must have bee
n years ago. I still had my navel piercing. Uh, let me think… Are there any more pictures of the yacht?”
“No.”
“Shit. Hmm. If it’s the party I’m thinking of, I snuck on board behind some TV star and his entourage.” She got up and stepped closer. “Yes, it’s all coming back now. That guy…” She pointed at a muscle-bound man standing near her. “He fell overboard, I’m sure of it. And I couldn’t jump in to help him because my necklace had a camera in it, and I wasn’t sure whether it was waterproof.”
“A camera? So you have pictures?”
“No, the CIA has pictures. The yacht belonged to a Russian, and they wanted to know who he was associating with.”
“Do you still have a contact there?”
“I’ll call him.”
Sofia slipped out of the room, leaving Alaric to take the floor again.
“If we can get decent pictures, we’re one step ahead of the task force. They’ve been scratching around for months with few results, and rumour says Merrick Childs is getting desperate. Probably why he turned a blind eye to the abuse going on in that house. Oh, and he’s also furious, but the good news is that he thinks this morning’s raid was carried out by the Mafia, so everyone’s treading very carefully while they try to unravel the crime scene.”
They’d spend a long time doing that. Team Blackwood all had alibis. Black had met with his attorney for an early breakfast while Emmy had undergone a gruelling session with her personal trainer.
“Good. While they’re pissing into the wind with that, we’ve got a clear run at Arden and The Banker. Have they ever put a name to him?”
“Not even a hint of one. The guy hides behind offshore investments and back-room deals. Did we get anything from Radcliffe’s laptop?”
Nate grimaced. “Nothing. Not only did he delete the files, he also wiped the entire hard drive. Mack’s trying to piece it back together, but it doesn’t look hopeful.”
Black hated to end the day on a bad note, but apart from shutting down the Florida brothel, there hadn’t been much good news. Corazon, Isabella, and The Banker were still in the wind. Alaric was still sleeping in the spare room. And after this morning’s escapade, Emmy’s demons were bound to make an appearance, so Black wouldn’t get any sleep tonight.